Rogue Trader: Core Rulebook

In Rogue Trader, you take on the role of a Rogue Trader and his most trusted counsellors, empowered by an ancient warrant of trade to seek out profit and plunder amongst unexplored regions of space. Your ship will take you to new worlds and uncharted reaches of the void, where you will encounter rivals, pirates, aliens, and possibly even creatures of the warp. You will acquire and spend great wealth and riches, and fame or infamy will follow. You will discover ancient and forgotten mysteries and search out the unknown to find lost human worlds or never before seen celestial phenomena. You must survive the dangers of space, for beyond the threat of vacuum and deadly radiation lurk things Man was never meant to find.

To be part of a Rogue Trader’s crew is to stand on the threshold of nearly unlimited opportunity. Vast profits await for you and your fellow Explorers to find and claim. Fame and fortune reward the bold, but the unwary find only an anonymous death.

• Fast character creation to get you into the game quickly, including a lifetime of possibilities with an expanded origin path system.

• Dynamic rules for all eventualities that let you handle everything from social interaction to deadly fast-paced combat, starships and psychic powers to a system of profit and influence.

• Build your own starship or begin play with one of the six pre-generated vessels.

Begin your players’ path to wealth and glory with a complete starting adventure that puts the Explorers right into the middle of the action. The Rogue Trader core rulebook contains everything you need to start your adventure in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

We uploaded the two files that were available to us from the transfer. The smaller one is the same except that someone started to add links but did not provide any actions for the links. So if you don't mind seeing links that don't work, the smaller one should be fine.

If there is a general consensus that this doesn't bother anyone, we can remove the larger file. But in the meantime we will leave them both up.

-Eric for Ulisses North America

Michael MOctober 06, 2017 3:48 am UTC

PURCHASER

I have a question for Drive Thru: What is the difference between the two files? One is the 'complete' version. As far as I can tell they are both the same (401 pages with artwork) except the complete is a larger file size.

Michael MOctober 06, 2017 3:44 am UTC

PURCHASER

In my opinion, this is the best rules set out of the 40k rpg series. You can have the feel of Firefly...but you are in a massive city-sized starship crewed by thousands...yet it is the actions of a few (your party) that make all the difference.

The ruleset can be a bit daunting but is still very rich in the fluff and background that makes 40k one of the best known universes out there.

Michael DDecember 21, 2014 7:10 pm UTC

When making an RPG adaptation of a miniatures wargame, nuance and crunch in combat is expected. You have to do the source material justice, and since "In the 41st Millennium there is Only War", a 40K RPG is always going to put the violence centre stage. But there's a difference between presenting tactical options and needlessly complicating things, and crunchy should not mean clunky. The sheer number of difficulty modifiers in Rogue Trader is impossible to remember, necessitating reference material at every gaming session. Combine that with incredibly long lists of skills, talents and wargear, and the "strategy" of Rogue Trader's combat is more about knowing all the rules and remembering which apply than it is about skillful manipulation of your environment.

Still, it's 40K, and as a fan of the wargame since I was 12, nostalgia mandates I give it a pass. It's clear the creators love the universe too, because that grimdark flavour leaks from every page, with in-universe quotes accompanying...See more every new heading. Fantasy Flight books are expensive, but their production values partially justify that - the book is beautiful, and classic artwork is accompanied by plenty of new material. It's a shame not as much care was paid to editing. Many rules, copy-pasted straight out of Dark Heresy first edition, refer players to completely the wrong page.

Rogue Trader has unusually in-depth character creation, and an incredibly restrictive class-based advancement system that I'm totally on board with. Though it leads to some weirdness (it takes a whole campaign before your Rogue Trader is high enough level to learn to swim), the inflexibility of advancement feels an appropriate fit for the socially-immobile dystopian setting. Rogue Trader also gets bonus points for being the only 40K RPG to acknowledge the "space" in "space opera", and remember to include rules for starships. Though the actual mechanics are hit and miss (running multiple NPC vessels is an absolute pain to GM), having your own spaceship successfully reinforces the book's motif of self-sufficiency. Other 40K PCs are beholden to Inquisitors, military commanders or daemonic patrons; Rogue Traders are beholden only to themselves.

For all the game's mechanical awkwardness, there are enough sockets plugged in to the setting to make it feel cohesive. I'd never use 40K's system to run any other game... But if I was running a game set in the 40K universe, I wouldn't use any other system.

(I never review a game I haven’t played or run. Check out http://michaelduxbury.com/category/reviews/ for more RPG reviews.)

This is a wonderful main book! I purchased the Drive Thru RPG PDF version as a backup to the physical book. The system is fantastically simple to understand and is all based on D10's! If you are looking for a space opera that is well written and has [...]

In some ways, this is the strongest game in the W40KRP series - as it captures the exploration motif well enough for players to forget what an oppressive universe they are travelling in. The system is developed somewhat on from Dark Heresy in the chara [...]

I really enjoy the content. The layout could be improved -- character creation is spread out and requires flipping back and forth as well as discovering several near-hidden bits tucked away. Some bits of art seem to be damaged or obscure [...]

These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.

Original electronic format

These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.

File Information

Watermarked PDF

Adobe DRM-protected PDF

These eBooks are protected by Adobe's Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. To use them, you must activate your Adobe Reader software. Click here for more details.

Watermarked PDF

These eBooks are digitally watermarked to signify that you are the owner. A small message is added to the bottom of each page of the document containing your name and the order number of your eBook purchase.

Warning: If any books bearing your information are found being distributed illegally, then your account will be suspended and legal action may be taken against you.